Davis, Hank 1941-

PERSONAL:

Born July 6, 1941, in New York, NY; son of Alfred H. and Sarah Davis. Education: Columbia University, B.A., 1963; Boston University, M.A., 1965; University of Maryland, Ph.D., 1968. Hobbies and other interests: Music, baseball.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Puslinch, Ontario, Canada. Office—Department of Psychology, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario NIG 2W1, Canada. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Professor and author. Naval Medical Research Institute, MD, psychologist, 1965-67; California State University, Los Angeles, assistant professor of psychology, 1968-70; University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada, began as associate professor, became professor of psychology, 1971—, and founding member of Centre for the Study of Animal Welfare. Music and baseball journalist; former recording artist; annotator, producer, and compiler of record albums.

MEMBER:

Psychonomic Society, Animal Behaviour Society, Human Behavior and Evolution Society.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with Harry M.B. Hurwitz) Operant-Pavlovian Interactions (conference papers), Lawrence Erlbaum (New York, NY), 1977.

(Editor, with Dianne Balfour) The Inevitable Bond: Examining Scientist-Animal Interactions, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1992.

Small-Town Heroes: Images of Minor League Baseball, University of Iowa Press (Iowa City, IA), 1997, published with new afterword by the author, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 2003.

Classic Cliffhangers, Midnight Marquee Press (Baltimore, MD), Volume 1: 1914-1940, 2007, Volume 2: 1941-1955, 2008.

Author of a monthly column on vintage movie serials for Big Reel. Contributor of articles and reviews to Goldmine; author of scientific papers on experimental psychology and animal learning and cognition.

SIDELIGHTS:

Hank Davis is the coeditor of The Inevitable Bond: Examining Scientist-Animal Interactions, a book that focuses on relationships that can develop between scientists and their animals. The contributors deal with the topic directly and discuss the effect of the relationship on the animals under observation and the relationship as part of the observation process. Choice reviewer S. Hensch called it "a unique book that will interest any researcher who works with nonhuman subjects." Robin Dunbar said in New Scientist that an "interesting issue raised by some contributors is the converse problem: the importance of the animal-scientist bond in persuading animals to take part in studies. This is particularly prominent in studies of cognitive skills where the animal may have to go through a lengthy process of training. Engaging the animal's interest in these cases is, as Irene Pepperberg emphasises in her chapter, dependent on detailed knowledge of the animal's natural behaviour and environment." Pepperberg trained Alex, her African gray parrot, to use English in simple sentences. Nancy Caine noted in her chapter on observed South American tamarin monkeys that at night they delayed returning to their nests, taking an extra ten or fifteen minutes to satisfy themselves that they were safe. The link between fear and the growth rates in pigs and their handling is addressed in another chapter.

Contemporary Psychology contributor Timothy D. Johnston suggested that the message in all of the contributions is that "no matter what you may like to believe, the relationship you develop with your animal subjects affects both their behavior and your perception of their behavior. This relationship may be minimal (and the research methodology may seek to minimize it even further) or it may be intense and long-lasting, but it cannot fail to influence what goes on in the experiments and what comes out of them in the way of data and understanding." Johnston wrote that "the contributions to this volume are very diverse, both in style and in content…. What the book really needs is a chapter that draws together the various themes that emerge from the contributors and discusses what can be learned about animal-scientist interactions from the collection of very disparate views presented here. Even in the absence of such a synthesis, however, the book contains valuable insights." Johnston mentioned his particular enjoyment of chapters by Fentress about wolves, and Burghardt about black bears.

Davis's interests extend beyond his scientific expertise to music, baseball, and cinema. He is a former recording artist, specializing in music of the 1950s, and he worked in the production of albums for companies in the United States, Canada, Germany, France, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. In writing Small-Town Heroes: Images of Minor League Baseball, Davis spent seven years researching his subject and visited nearly thirty minor league ball parks over a three-year period. His stops included London, Ontario; Batavia, New York; Erie, Pennsylvania; Canton, Ohio; Durham, North Carolina; and Elizabethton, Tennessee. He interviewed players and managers trying to teach the game to young men just out of high school, a man who was paid to retrieve balls lost in the brush beyond the field, and a preacher who was mascot to the Asheville, North Carolina, team. The players work for very low salaries, and most never make it to the big leagues, but Davis did meet New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter when he was playing for the Greensboro Hornets. Charles Salzberg reported in the New York Times Book Review that Davis "has written a remarkable chronicle of life in the minor leagues, a lighthearted, bittersweet paean to the purest form of the national pastime … Hank Davis is a true baseball fan." Davis's observations were called "informative and at times hilarious," by Morey Berger and Paul Kaplan in Library Journal. A Publishers Weekly reviewer noted that Davis portrays the people he meets "with understanding and compassion but without sentimentalizing them."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Aethlon, fall, 1998, review of Small-Town Heroes: Images of Minor League Baseball, p. 209.

Animals' Agenda, January, 1994, Ken Shapiro, review of The Inevitable Bond: Examining Scientist-Animal Interactions, p. 40.

Choice, January, 1993, S. Hensch, review of The Inevitable Bond, p. 823; November, 1997, review of Small-Town Heroes, p. 523.

Contemporary Psychology, April, 1978, Ben A. Williams, "Conditioning: Process or Procedure?," pp. 230-231; July, 1994, Timothy D. Johnston, "Scientists Watch Scientists Studying Animals," pp. 717-718.

Library Journal, February 1, 1997, Morey Berger, Paul Kaplan, review of Small-Town Heroes, p. 82.

New Scientist, September 26, 1992, Robin Dunbar, "Uncertainty in the Animal House," p. 44.

New York Times Book Review, June 8, 1997, Charles Salzberg, review of Small-Town Heroes, p. 25.

Publishers Weekly, January 13, 1997, review of Small-Town Heroes, p. 62.